Those kids of mine....

My kids are pretty non-mischievous. I have only found things in the toilet one or two times. There have only been a few cases of coloring on the wall (and nothing permanent). They have never played with the contents of their diaper. For one thing, I'm pretty controlling and obsessive, so I almost always know exactly what they are doing and they don't get a lot of opportunities. Also, we've always lived in close quarters, so I can pretty much see the entire house from my spot at the computer. :) And for another thing, I think they are just pretty laid-back kids who aren't looking for trouble. I hope that is the case, because yesterday Blaise got into some trouble and it was pretty stressful and kept me up late with "what-ifs".

We spent a good part of the afternoon outside on a sleeping bag just hanging out, enjoying the sunshine. After a while we invited my neighbor out with her baby to enjoy the warmth. While she and I were talking the kids decided to mess around inside. Rae thought it'd be funny to lock the door. That's fine, because she knows how to UNLOCK it (it's pretty stiff and hard to unlock) She came back outside and Blaise decided to lock the door. Yikes. He does not know how to unlock the door, and quickly realized this and got really upset. I tried for a minute to get him to unlock it but knew it just wasn't going to happen.

But of all days for this to happen - today was the perfect day. My neighbor was right there and I could use her phone. Roy had taken the car to work AND there were no students yesterday, so he didn't have classes or office hours. I called him and told him to hurry home and unlock the door. He was home within 10 minutes. Meanwhile Blaise was pretty unhappy in the house, but Rae and I just talked to him through the window and told him that daddy was coming with the keys. At one point Blaise got my keys out of my purse and brought them to the window and said "mommy, here are your keys, open the door!". It was so cute and pathetic and funny! It was stressful but it was all over pretty quickly and Blaise was fine after we opened the door. And Rae and Blaise both seemed to learn their lesson. I hope so, because....

...On any other day things would not have gone so easily. Roy does not usually have a car. Sometimes he does have a car, but is in class most of the day. Sometimes I'm the only one in my neighborhood home and wouldn't have access to a phone. Would I send someone to Roy's office to get the house key? How quickly would my landlord or a locksmith be able to get there? How long would Blaise sit at the window crying and how long until he'd become hysterical? All of these questions ran through my head last night, and as I asked Roy each one he just said "you'll just have to make sure it doesn't happen again so you don't find out". And he's right. I'll never let them play around in the house like that again. And while I'm at it, I'll probably be even more obsessive about everything else around here too. Heaven forbid we ever move to a two-story house - I'll never be able to relax!! (oh, and in the picture at the top they are sledding - cute huh?)

I miss.....

...California in the spring. It snowed today. I want to drive south until I hit temps in the 70s. I need sunshine, I need warmth, I need to be outside. Please spring, come and stay awhile.

Snowman, Haircut and Soccer

Roy starting his big project.


It was a little too big for the kids to help.


The finished product. This was around 11am.


By noon it was melting and starting to lean.


This is what it looked like when we got home from church at 4 that afternoon. So Roy had the kids try to push him over. It took awhile for them to find the right spot. Take a good look in the video at 40 seconds. Rae steps back and goes forward with her shoulders like they always do in cartoons - it's so cute!




The next day the bottom of the snowman was the only sign of snow.

In other news, we decided Blaise desperately needed a haircut. It looked fine when it was smoothed down, but most of the time his hair was ridiculously messy. So we finally broke down and bought a hair buzzer thingy. (We had one before but it was a really cheap one that didn't work very well) We were going to try to give him a decent haircut, but he does not handle haircuts very well, so we just buzzed it all around.

Before.
After. It took me a while to get used to it, but I think he looks good both ways. I miss his long, beautiful hair, but this is definitely much easier!


And in other news, Rae had her first soccer game today! It was cold and windy and Rae was not in the mood to play. She and her friend were very distracted and pretty silly at the beginning of the game. By the end of the game Rae was just grumpy and refused to play. She kicked the ball one time - the rest of the time she just let it go right past her. She never ran towards the ball or anything. Hopefully she'll be more entergentic and enthusiastic when it's warmer. Or maybe I'll have to sign her up for dance classes or science classes or something. She said she likes practices better, probably because she gets a chance to have her own ball to kick around! Hopefully it'll get warmer and the next game in two weeks will be more enjoyable.

Goofing around.
The first time the ball came towards them.

"What am I supposed to do??"

Well, at least she turned towards the ball.


"I'm done!"

Totally slacking

I just haven't been in the mood to blog lately. I won't go into too much detail about Michigan, because it will take too long, so I'll just write about the highlights.

Roy's interview was on Thursday, so the kids and I just hung out and shopped and swam in our hotel pool. It was a nice, relaxing day.



We went to Chuck E. Cheese's for lunch. Man, their pizza is horrible!


Rae got lost in the tunnels. She kept coming to this spot and looking out the window to figure out how to get out. It was so sad but so funny! I had to send a little boy up there to help her!


Friday we got up and headed to Frankenmuth for the day. Did you click on the link? Do it. Frankenmuth is a little tourist town with Bavarian-themed shops and restaurants. Roy grew up going there a lot. It was so fun! There were tons of candy shops and fudge shops (man, you could smell the fudge from the street!) and toy shops. It was like being in Germany again! I got a couple of yummy German pretzels. Then we headed over to Bronner's Christmas Store. It's the world's largest Christmas store. (Roy went there when he was a kid) The kids had a lot of fun. After that we went to a McDonald's down the street that was even Bavarian-themed! If you are ever in the area of Frankenmuth, I definitely recommend going!



In this cheese shop they had "chocolate cheese". (I don't know how they made theirs, but this is the only thing I could find when I googled it. Roy loves it, but I couldn't even swallow it!

I really wish I had gotten one of these! They were expensive, but I should have splurged! But I had really bad heartburn that week and figured this would make it worse.

A huge Santa outside of Bronners.

Distance from Bronners to various places.

Giant polar bear giving Rae a hug.



The McDonalds we ate at.


We went back into Saginaw (well, actually Bay City) and stayed another night. Saturday morning we drove into Flint (where Roy grew up) and spent an hour looking at the houses he used to live in. It was neat to see Roy remember little details about the area and neighborhoods. When we got to the house where he lived when he was ages 4-6 he remembered that there was a playground around the block, so we went there for the kids to play. And then we went to the trailer park where he lived when he was ages 6-13 and he took pictures of the creek he used to cross to walk to school. We also stopped by his old school. Even if Roy doesn't get the job in Saginaw I'm glad our whole family went on this trip so we could all see where Roy grew up. It was pretty neat.


Roy lived here from ages 4-6


The playground around the block.



His old school.

We drove all day Saturday and got home by 10pm to a lovely snowstorm. Gee whiz, can't spring have a turn?! It all melted the next day, but not before we had a chance to make one last* snowman! (*That's what we said about the snowman we made a couple of months ago!)

The snow that was there to welcome us home!



This week has been off and on rainy one day, sunny the next day. We try to enjoy the sunny days as much as possible! It's supposed to be warm and sunny tomorrow, so Rae might actually have a soccer game! (Her game on Saturday got canceled and so did her practice on Monday) Roy won't hear from Saginaw till Monday at the earliest, so I'll keep you posted! And I'll post pictures of our gigantic snowman later.

Happy Birthday Colin!

Rae says she misses you and hopes she gets to see you soon - she said she likes playing games on the tv with you! Hope you have a great birthday!

(Preview)

Ashley's slacking, so here's a preview of her eventual next post.

- The Husband

Trying to catch up

There's so much I want to write about but I just haven't had the time lately. I want to do a whole post about Rae and all of the things she's been up to lately. Having a 4 1/2 year old is a lot of fun! She had a fantastic time at soccer practice Monday night. She was a little goofy- dancing around when she should have been listening, but she has the skills to make up for it :) I forgot my camera but I snapped a few pictures on my cell phone, so I'll post those sometime soon. Roy tried to make fun of me saying that I was now a "soccer mom" but that's a great compliment for me! I've always been athletic and couldn't wait for the day when my kids would start sports. In fact, when I married non-athletic Roy I worried I'd end up with couch potato, computer building geniuses, but I won't let that happen ;) Okay, maybe they can be athletic geniuses :)

Anyway, we leave this afternoon for Michigan, so I have a lot to do to get ready. I'm going to have so much to catch up on next week!

She's been waiting.... and.... waiting

At the beginning of the month I signed Rae up for soccer. She has been so excited and asks on a daily basis when she starts. We bought shin pads, shoes and a soccer ball. Her first practice is tonight but it's raining. :( I really hope it will clear up and dry up in time, but it is very unlikely. It makes me so sad! Also, she has to miss her first game this weekend because we'll be out of town. She doesn't know that she'll be missing it though, so that makes it a little better. I'm really hoping that if practice gets canceled today they'll reschedule it for tomorrow.

When your kids are faced with disappointments like this do you feel like you have to make it up to them somehow? I know that they've gotta get used to things getting canceled and plans getting messed up. But I find myself saying things like "well, there's not going to be any soccer tonight because of the rain, so how about you and I go out for some ice cream." And Rae has been asking to go to Chuck E Cheese so I was thinking of taking her this weekend while we are out of town since she has to miss her game. (Even though she doesn't even KNOW she is missing a game!) I guess it is probably okay to do every once in a while but I probably do it too often, and I think Rae probably expects it sometimes. Hmmm, I think this may be a sign that I am feeling guilty for other slacking I've been doing and other times when I'm too busy to just play with the kids. What do you think? Do you do the same thing?

Update: It stopped raining and the sun came out! It's really really windy, but I'm thinking there will still be practice - yay!

I'm not so sure about this....

Roy has a campus interview in Saginaw, MI next week. He also teaches every day of the week, so it is really hard to arrange a time when he can be away. Oh yeah, let's throw in the fact that the nearest airport is 3 hours away. We have an airport here that has flights to St.Louis, but they only have two flights a day - one in the morning, one in the evening. And the airport in Saginaw is small too - just two airlines and not a whole lot of early morning or late evening flights (which is what Roy needed) So, anyway, we did a ton of searching and there was just no way Roy could fly without missing an extra day of classes, so he is going to drive! Oh, and even if he had found a flight, by the time he drove to the airport and flew to Saginaw (there are no non-stop flights) it would have been about 6-8 hours of travel anyway. The drive is about 11 hours.

So, how about we make it a little more interesting and have the whole family go?! Saginaw is about 30 miles away from where Roy grew up (Flint), so we thought this would be a nice chance to go see his hometown. (And also see what Saginaw is like in case he gets an offer there) We are leaving Wednesday afternoon at 2:30, right after Roy's last class. His interview starts at 9am on Thursday. We are hoping he'll be able to sleep while I do some of the driving....and of course hoping that the kids are angels! Then we have all day Friday and Saturday to explore and we'll drive home on Sunday. (We might make half the drive home Saturday afternoon) Should be an interesting adventure!

Poor Roy - he's got so much to do. He has to prepare for an interview, get subs for his classes, do all the regular class prep work and try to keep up on sleep so he isn't dead by the time the interview comes! He was up till 4 in the morning Friday night and last night (thankfully we don't have church till 1pm) I'm trying to feel sorry for him instead of myself :) I'm trying to keep his household duties to a minimum, which means not as many things are getting done around here! :) He's such an amazing guy - he never complains about anything. I bet a lot of us wish we could be more like our husbands when it comes to not whining so much!

Anyway, I'm excited, but it's been a while since our kids have been on that long of a drive, so we'll see how it goes! I'm packing the Benadryl! Wish us luck!

Oh, and I totally need to post about St.Patrick's Day - maybe I'll get around to that this evening.

Stupid Walmart

Has anyone else had trouble finding White Cloud diapers? We haven't been able to get them for about a month now. I'm wondering if it is just our Walmart or if maybe White Cloud is being discontinued. For now we are stuck using Parent's Choice - yuck. I've tried Target's store brand and I don't like theirs at all. Has anyone tried Costco's diapers? Any good? Suggestions for other diapers I should try?

Sigh, I was completely satisfied with White Cloud and I'm so bummed that I can't find them. I have such huge trials in my life. :)

Finishing up Spring break

After we left the zoo we drove a little ways out of St.Louis towards home and stopped at a Costco. My leg was feeling a little bit better, good enough to walk around. We got a few things and a few samples and then went down the street to Chili's for lunch/dinner. Yum yum yum. When we got back in the car Blaise fell asleep immediately and Rae was being really good. It was a peaceful drive. I had to pee after a while (I can't go more than an hour in the car without having to pee - so annoying!) so we stopped at a cheesy souvenir shop. We ended up being there about 30 minutes - there was so much to see! We bought the kids some rock candy and I had some flashbacks of trips to Quartzite!

Anyway, we drove to Columbia, which is about halfway home and stopped at the mall so the kids could ride the carousel and get some wiggles out. They had a great time there. The rest of the drive home they watched a movie and amazingly stayed awake. We got home around 9:30pm and all went straight to bed. It was good to get away for a bit. But back to reality! Thursday Roy had a phone interview so he was in his office all day. I was still in a lot of pain, so I spent the day on the couch and the kids spent the day whining and trashing the house! Luckily I felt better on Friday. On Saturday we went out to the lake and enjoyed some fresh air and the beautiful weather. We spent the rest of the day catching up on chores, cleaning out the van (which included re-arranging the carseats to make room for Isaac) and enjoying the last of our time with daddy! It was a great week and we are so sad to have Roy back in full-swing and busy, busy, busy. But we've had a couple of warm days this week, so it's been okay. It's amazing what a difference some sunshine can make in my life!

In other news - we still don't know where we will be next year. Roy has an offer to stay here and that was the plan, but now a couple of schools have shown some interest in him, so we are waiting to see what happens with that. We'll keep you posted.

So-so St. Louis Part II

Wednesday morning we got up and hit the free breakfast at the hotel. It was very tasty. We got dressed and packed up and managed to get out the door a lot earlier than I thought we would. I wanted to get to the zoo as early as possible because the Children's Zoo is free the first hour that the zoo is open. (The actual zoo is free to get into and then they charge for certain exhibits and rides) We got there and had the whole place to ourselves! The reason? It was a nippy 35 degrees and windy! Luckily I had brought our winter jackets and even gloves, but it was still too cold! We went straight to the children's zoo and there was a nice indoor area for the kids to explore. We went there first to warm up.



Blaise wasn't really interested in any of the animals, he just wanted to sit in this car the whole time. They had some cute guinea pigs to pet and hold and he liked that, but the rest of the time he was "driving". Rae was also more interested in the toys and climbing area than the actual animals. Oh well. At least we were warm :) After a while we ventured back outside and walked around the rest of the children's zoo. They had some fun slides and ropes to climb on, but it was just too cold! There was ice on the slides. :(

The kids really wanted to ride the carousel, so we headed in that direction next. We stopped at the penguins. They were so cute! They were getting fed when we there, so that was fun. Rae and the kids went inside the exhibit to see more, but I stayed outside because the smell was too strong for me.



Puffins.



If you look closely on the left you can see one swimming towards Rae. Man, they were so cute!

We headed to the carousel next but it was closed! :( The train was closed too. Major bummer. And by this point my leg was starting to hurt a bunch (I think I pulled something while I was ice skating or when I was playing around in the children's zoo) and the kids were starting to get a little tired and cold and bored. We went to see the "big cats" next and the kids really liked that. Then we stopped to eat our lunch but it was too cold to sit for more than 5 minutes! By this point the kids were really really ticked. We went into the bird exhibit next to warm up again! These are the only other pictures we have at the zoo:



My leg was really really hurting!



Blaise hates to be cold - he was pretty unhappy the whole time.



Rae was probably the happiest of all of us.


We really wanted to see the elephants but decided they were too long of a walk away and the kids wouldn't care anyway. So we stopped by the sea lions and then the gift shop (luckily they had some cool stuff on clearance, so we were actually able to buy the kids a few things) and then we left! Fairly uneventful and disappointing trip to the zoo, but at least it was free! Across the street from the zoo (where we parked, to save $11!) they have all these turtles to climb on. Roy took them to do that while I sat in the car and planned our route to Costco. I think they had more fun on the turtles than they did in the zoo! And Roy took a ton of pictures of them!



"Feeding" the turtles.







I'll finish this up with Part III tomorrow.

Someday

I really will get around to posting about the rest of our St Louis trip soon. But today was full of outside fun (yay for the sun!) and tons of chores and now I'm pooped and just want to hang out on the couch with Roy and enjoy the kids' early bedtime!

So-so St. Louis

We had a great time in St Louis, but there were a few things that weren't as great as I was hoping. The kids were great on the drive there - I don't know what we'd do without our portable dvd player!! I never imagined I'd have so many electronics in the car!

Our first stop was an outlet mall on the way into town so that I could go to Motherhood and get a pair of pants. We got there and discovered that there was an ice skating rink, which was going to be our second stop! This rink was a lot cheaper than the other one we planned to go to, so we did that first. The plan was for Roy to take Rae and for Blaise and I to watch. But Roy has never been ice skating in his life, and I've been 3 times, so we thought it'd be better for me to go. Ha. I haven't skated for about 8 years, so it was like my first time. Add the pregnant belly to the situation, and it was pretty funny to watch. I think Rae thought she'd be able to get on the ice and just skate, so she was very disappointed. We scooted along the wall for about 15 minutes and had only made it halfway around the rink. Rae said she wanted to be done, so we had to cut across the rink to get to the exit. Leaving the wall was scary but we managed to do it with Rae only falling once and I was able to stay standing. My ankles were killing me, so I was glad Rae was ready to be done! At least she can say she got to try and she said maybe she'll try again when she's five :) Oh, and after a while I was actually able to let go of the wall and skate pretty decently for several yards. I was impressed with myself.


Just starting out and afraid to leave the wall.


Leaving the safety of the wall to cut across to the other side.


We can make it!



Stopping to entertain Blaise.


Whew, almost done.

After skating I went off in search of some pants and Roy and the kids explored the mall. I went the long way around the mall and ended up walking a good 20 minutes before I got to the Motherhood store. I was exhausted. Walking is not very easy these days. I get a lot of burning in my lower belly after I've been standing for too long. It's really annoying. Anyway, I got some pants, the kids had fun at the mall and it was time to go to the hotel.

I got an awesome Priceline deal on our hotel. It was a huge room with a kitchen and a sofa sleeper and a nice king-sized bed. It was right across the street from another mall and just a few miles from the zoo. We did a quick trip to Target (right down the street) and then to the mall for some Panda Express for the preggers girl. The hotel had a "manager's social" that night, so we got free food - hot dogs, hamburgers, etc. It was pretty great. We got the kids to bed early and Roy and I stayed up to watch Heroes on the laptop, since we missed it Monday night. It was a pretty decent day :) Oh, and did I mention that it was 70 degrees in St Louis?! Unfortunately the weather was not as nice the next day. Sigh.

The kids are getting really antsy and I've been ignoring them all day, so I'll write about the rest of our trip tomorrow.

Quick catch-up

We are headed to St.Louis today for a mini-vacation. Woo hoo! I thought I'd do an update before we go because I'll have a lot to post about when we get back.

The kids got bunk beds last week. Someday I'll write all about how I put them together mostly on my own. Blaise kept falling out of his toddler bed because he didn't have enough room to move around, so we knew he needed a twin bed. We were planning to have the beds separated until Rae got older, but we decided she is such a careful, mature little girl and she'd be fine on the top bunk. And Blaise is afraid to even climb the ladder, so we don't have to worry about him getting up there. It's nice to have so much room in their bedroom. Oh, I just realized I don't even have a picture of the bunk bed yet, so I'll have to post it later.

We also bought the kids a toy kitchen. I just realized I don't have a picture of it yet. Man, I'm slacking on the pictures. Can I just say that I LOVE Walmart's site-to-store option? I've used it so many times - fantastic!

And yet another toy we got recently (umm, big tax return!) is a Tom-Tom! Woo hoo! I've wanted one forever (we get lost every time we go somewhere new) and with this trip to St.Louis I decided it was really time to get one. Luckily it was Amazon's Gold Box deal on the day I decided to get one! It was only $99! I'm in love.

Okay, I didn't mean for this to be a post all about the money we've spent recently! But there were a few things we've been wanting to get and the IRS helped us get those things. :)

Yesterday we spent the day doing spring cleaning. We went through all of the boxes in our closet and got rid of a ton of stuff. Whew, so nice to have that done! And then we finally organized our filing cabinet and got rid of a huge bag of papers. Can I just tell you that projects like that make me completely giddy? I've had to wait for Roy to help with both of those projects, so to finally have it done makes me feel so good! I like to know that everything in my closet, drawers, filing cabinet, etc, is stuff I actually need and I know exactly where everything is. Yup, I'm a little obsessed.

Anyway, we'll be back late Wednesday night and I'll post pictures of our adventures! I hope the weather cooperates!